Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . ." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness -- sexual pleasure for its own sake -- or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Paulo Coelho's astonishingly beautiful writing in Eleven Minutes virtually guarantees it the cult status that The Alchemist already enjoys. But what is the Paulo Coelho phenomenon? How can an author who (only a short time ago) was virtually unknown to most readers have taken the world of books by storm--and without the benefit of glitzy advertising? The answer is simple: quality. Such books as The Fifth Mountain andThe Devil and Miss Prym are enough to explain a considerable following for the author, with their atmospheric prose and involving characters. Eleven Minutes tells the story of young Maria living an innocent life in a Brazilian village and is played out in a measured fashion, but with all the author's brilliant scene-setting (very lush here) fully in place. But then Maria experiences love and suffers great pain. From this point, Coelho has us inexorably in his grip. Maria's disillusionment with love leads her to Geneva where she finally ends up selling her body (Coelho may offer us the beauty of life, but never at the expense of its harshness). Maria's approach to sex is complex--this is no mere revulsion arising from what she is now doing with her life. And then she meets a seductive young painter, who may or may not offer her a new path in life. But does she prefer to continue on the dark sexual odyssey she has embarked on, at the expense of real love? There are echoes of DH Lawrence in Coelho's exploration of the sacred and spiritual aspects of sex and it's a brave author who tackles a subject that can so easily slip into strained seriousness. That never happens here, and Maria's journey is one that the reader willingly undertakes; the lesson she learns are lessons for the reader. --Barry Forshaw

Maria, a young girl from a remote village of Brazil, whose first encounters with love leave her heartbroken, goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland. She works for a time in a nightclub but soon becomes dissatisfied and after a heated discussion with her manager one night, she quits her job. She tries to become a model but is unsuccessful. Because she is running out of money, she accepts 1000 francs from an Arab man to spend the night with him. She then decides to become a prostitute and ends up in a brothel on Rue de Berne, the heart of Geneva's red-light district... There she befriends Nyah who gives her advice on her "new profession" and after learning the tricks of the trade from Milan, the brothel owner, she enters the job with her body and mind shutting all doors for love and keeps her heart open only for her diary. Quickly she becomes quite successful and famous and her colleagues begin to envy her. Months pass and Maria grows into a professionally groomed prostitute who not only relaxes her clients' mind, but also calms their soul by talking to them about their problems. Her world turns upside down when she meets Ralf, a young Swiss painter, who sees her "inner light." Maria falls in love with him immediately and begins to experience what true love is (according to the author, it is a sense of being for someone without actually possessing him/her). Maria is now split between her sexual fantasies and true love for Ralf. Eventually she decides that it is time for her to leave Geneva with her memory of Ralf, because she realizes that they are worlds apart. But before leaving, she decides to rekindle the dead sexual fire in Ralf and learns from him about the nature of Sacred Sex, sex which is mingled with true love and which involves the giving up of one's soul for the loved one. This book explores the sacred nature of sex. "Eleven minutes" describes the duration of sex. Also, it depicts two types of prostitution: prostitution for money and sacred prostitution. There are also direct references to sadomasochism. The story is of Maria's journey to find what true love is by letting her own life guide her. She enters a life that leads her down the path of sexual awakening and almost leads to her self-destruction when she is introduced to all sides of sexual experience. When she has given up hope to find true love, she finds her true "inner light" and her everlasting true love.